


There are fragments of her still

by HelveticaBrown



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 05:43:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5036065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelveticaBrown/pseuds/HelveticaBrown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been three weeks and there are reminders of Emma Swan everywhere she looks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There are fragments of her still

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know what made me write this, but I've decided I like it enough to bring it over from tumblr.
> 
> Just in case you missed the major character death warning, this is your last chance. The next 600 words are all sadness.

* * *

It’s the box of cereal that she puts on a shelf in the pantry (next to three others just like it) that finally does it. Regina can’t quite remember when buying Emma Swan’s favourite breakfast cereal became a habit ingrained so deep that picking it up off the shelf in the supermarket was nothing more than muscle memory.

Henry finds her sitting on the floor, hugging one of the boxes to her chest, and she’s finally crying the tears she hasn’t allowed herself to cry for the last three weeks. He sits on the floor next to her, and he’s stroking her hair and speaking soft, soothing, nonsense words (she thinks they’re nonsense, but she can barely focus on anything more than the sound of his voice). She can see him trying to be strong (he’s almost a man, now), but the façade cracks a little and then it’s in ruins.

They stay there together for an eternity, eating sugary cereal from the box (she’d always tried to get Emma to eat healthier, but she was so damn stubborn). It tastes even more awful than she remembers.

Eventually they stand and Henry has to steady her as her head spins from sitting down too long. She holds onto him a little longer than is necessary (her legs are steady but her heart is not).

She pauses at the bottom of the stairs. There’s a vase, one of a pair, its other half broken during a spontaneous game of baseball a couple of months ago (she’d shouted at Emma when she caught her trying to sneak the broken pieces into the trash).

There’s a coffee table in the sitting room with water stains from when Emma hadn’t used a coaster (she’d shouted at her then, too).

She thinks about smashing the vase, useless, unbalanced without its pair (she doesn’t). She’d smash every vase in the house, in the world, if she could take back those angry words (things that had seemed so important then aren’t anymore).

She gets ready for bed and slides in between the sheets. There is a single strand of golden hair on the pillowcase on Emma’s side of the bed. Its brethren are all over the house: on the back of the sofa in Emma’s favourite spot, in the lint filter of the dryer, on the jacket still hanging on the coat-rack in the hall. Sometimes she picks one up and wraps it around her fingers, pretends her hands are tangled in long, lustrous princess curls (they never will be again).

The pillowcase doesn’t match the rest of the linen and there was a time when that would have bothered her (she’s changed the rest of the sheets three times since). That time has passed.

There’s a book on Emma’s nightstand, open, facedown. Regina picks it up, runs her fingers over the text, reads that last page. It’s halfway through a chapter (she’d kissed Emma’s neck until she’d laughed and thrown the book aside).

The words on the page are out of context and make no sense to her; she was going to read it after Emma finished it, but Emma never will (neither will she, now).

She switches off the night light and turns, instinctively reaching out for Emma as she does every night (she finds empty space and cold sheets).

The house feels so strange. It was her house first, then hers and Henry’s, then the three of them together, Emma filling a space she hadn’t realised was there. There are fragments of her still (but they’ll soon be dust and then nothing at all). The spaces will remain.

She has so much practice with loss, and she’d always thought that with practice things became easier (some things don’t, she’s discovered). But losing Emma Swan is like learning grief all over again.

**Author's Note:**

> I am a horrible person, I know.


End file.
